VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI
COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE
POST GRADUATE STUDIES
*** BẠCH THỊ HOÀNG YẾN

A STUDY ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING VIDEO
IN TEACHING LISTENING FOR NON-MAJOR ENGLISH STUDENTS
AT PHUONG DONG UNIVERSITY

NGHIÊN CỨU TÍNH HIỆU QUẢ CỦA VIỆC SỬ DỤNG VIDEO
TRONG DẠY NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN TIẾNG ANH KHÔNG CHUYÊN
TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC PHƯƠNG ĐÔNG M.A. Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Methodology
Code: 601410
HANOI, APRIL 2009
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI
COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE
POST GRADUATE STUDIES
*****
3. Aims of the study 2
4. Scope of the study 2
5. Methods of the study 3
6. Design of the study 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4
Chapter one Literature review 4
1.1. Listening Comprehension 4
1.1.1. What is Listening Comprehension? 4
1.1.2. Listening Comprehension Process 4
1.2. The Roles of Listening in Language Teaching and Learning 6
1.2.1. To Acquire Language 6
1.2.2. To Develop Speaking Skill 6
1.2.3. To be the final goal of learning a language 8
1.3. The Benefits of Using Video in Teaching Listening 9
1.3.1. Video Generating Interest, Motivation and Concentration in Listening 9
1.3.2. Video Lowering Anxiety in Listening 10
1.3.3. Video Helping Learners Study Non-verbal Aspects of Communication 11
1.3.4. Video Providing the Background of Communication 11
1.4. Aspects of Video That Can Be Improved Through Video 12
1.4.1. Pronunciation 12
1.4.2. Vocabulary 12
1.4.3. Comprehension 13
Chapter two The Survey 15
2.1. The Context of The Study 15
2.2. The Subjects 15
2.3. The Data Collection Procedures 16
2.4. The Use of Video in the English Lessons 17
2.5. The Questionnaire and the Tests 17
2.6. Data Analysis and Discussion 18
2.6.1. Factors That Cause Difficulties in Learning Listening 18

REFERENCES
APPENDICES I
APPENDIX 1 : Survey Questionnaire for Teachers I
APPENDIX 2 : Survey Questionnaire for Students II iv
LIST OF ABREVIATIONS

ESP : English for Specific Purposes
GE : General English
IT : Information Technology
N : Number
PDU : Phuong Dong University
SD : Standard Deviation
T/F : True/ False
v
LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Tables:
Table 1: Students’ favorite activities while watching video films 17
Table 2: The effectiveness of video in teaching listening skill 18
Table 3: Some negative results of using video in teaching listening 19

Charts:
Chart 1: Students’ difficulties in learning listening 15
Chart 2: Students’ attitude towards video lessons 16
Chart 3: Students’ manner of watching video films 16
Chart 4: Raw marks in listening pre-test 21
Chart 5: Raw marks in listening post-test 23

and video. This combination of moving pictures and sound can present language more
comprehensively than any other teaching medium.”. That is the reason why I chose video as the
means to do an experimental research on how to interest students in listening lessons. The thesis
goes as:
“A study on the effectiveness of using video in teaching listening for non-major English
students at Phuong Dong University”

2. HYPOTHESIS
This study was designed to test the following hypothesis:
Video can be used as a motivator to generate students‟ interest and maintain their
concentration in listening to English as well as to improve both their top-down skills (clarifying
context, inferring ideas, identifying topics) and bottom-up listening skills (recognizing
vocabulary, identifying sentence stress and intonation), thus enhancing their listening
comprehension.

3. AIMS OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of using video in teaching
listening to non-major students so that some suggestions of how to use video in teaching listening
skills in the classroom can be given to help students improve these skills.
The specific aims are as follows:
 investigating the students‟ attitudes towards listening through video.
 finding out the effectiveness of using video in teaching listening
 suggesting some techniques of using video in teaching listening in the classroom.

4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
In this study, at first the researcher intended to examine how effective video is to listening
and speaking skills. However, due to the limitation of time and page number of a minor thesis,
the researcher could only conduct a survey on the using of video in teaching listening to find out
how to improve students‟ listening skills through video.
The survey was conducted on first-year students and the students are from two classes at the

using video in listening lessons.

 Chapter three emphasizes the implication of the study as well as some suggestions for
using video to improve listening skills to the students at PDU.
Part C, “Conclusion”, summarizes the key issues in the study, points out the limitations
and provides some suggestions for further study.

PART B: DEVELOPEMENT
CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW

underlying modes of language processes in listening, namely top-down and bottom-up processes
(o).
 Top-down process: In this reconstruction process, the listener uses prior knowledge of the
context and situation within which the listening takes place to construct the orginal
meaning of the speaker. Context and situation include such things as knowledge of the
topic at hand, the speaker and the relationship to the situation, as well as the relationship
between the speakers and prior events.
 Bottom-up process: This model assumes that listening is a process of decoding the sound
that one hears in a linear fashion, from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to
complete texts. According to this view, phonemic units are decoded and linked together to
form words, words are linked together to form phrases, phrases are linked together to
form utterances, and utterances are linked together to form complete, meaningful texts. In
other words, the process is a linear one, in which meaning itself is derived as the last step
in the process.
Imagine the following situations:
 Over lunch, your friend tells you a story about a recent holiday, which was a disaster.
You listen with interest and interject at appropriate moments, maybe to express
surprise or sympathy.
 That evening, another friend calls to invite you to a party at her house the following
Saturday. As you’ve never been to her house before, she gives you directions. You
listen carefully and make notes.
How do you listen in each case? Are there any differences? With the holiday anecdote,
your main concern was probably understanding the general idea and knowing when some
response was expected. In contrast, when listening to the directions to a party, understanding the
exact words is likely to be more important – if you want to get there without incident, that is! The
way you listened to the holiday anecdote could be characterized as top-down listening. This
refers to the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of the message.
Background knowledge consists of context, that is, the situation and topic, and co-text, in other
words, what came before and after (Morley, C. 2007). The context of chatting to a friend in a
casual environment itself narrows down the range of possible topics. Once the topic of a holiday

both speaker and listener. To prove this point, they conducted communication experiments in
which a speaker had to instruct a listener in drawing a diagram or in arranging a set of objects,
and they found that the most effective spoken performances came from speakers who had
previously been listeners on a similar task. Experience as a listener was more beneficial than
practice in the speaking role, as it seemed to highlight the needs of the listener for clear and
explicit instructions. Many of the speakers failed to produce „listener- friendly‟ messages without
prior listening practice (Anderson, Brown, & Yule, 1984). In a word, listening and speaking are
interdependent with each other.

1.2.3. To be the final goal of learning a language
According to Donoghue (1985), listening occupies the basic portion in the context of the
language arts and the progress in reading, speaking and writing is directly governed by listening
ability. It is the most important of the four arts since nearly half of the adult‟s working day and
more than half of the child‟s classroom activity time is spent in listening. Apart from
communication interaction, much of the enjoyment in second or foreign language comes from
listening activities like watching films and plays or watching TV or listening to songs. In class
students learn a lot from their teacher. They also learn from the tape or from each other through
the act of listening.
Moreover, students can gain a lot of experiences of listening to a wide variety of samples
of spoken English. It also helps the students know different varieties of language such as standard
or regional, formal or informal language. As a result, the amount of language contact through
communication increases.
Listening is, therefore, regarded to be among the most important educational goals. It
increases an individual‟s level of vocational skills and it results in great emotional response
changes in attitude. It also provides students a stimulus for other activities such as discussion,
reading and writing, which are the main language skills.

1.3. The Benefits of Using Video in Teaching Listening
The process of listening involves the ability to understand a speaker‟s accent or
pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasp his meaning (Howwatt & Dakin,

According to Susan Stempleski & Barry Tomalin (1990), the outstanding feature of video
films is their ability to capture the interest of viewers and stimulate their motivation in listening.
In other words, students feel their interest faster when language is experienced in a lively way
through video. The combination of moving pictures and sound can present language more
comprehensively than any other teaching medium and more realistically too.
Similarly, Balatova (1994) also states that video maintains students‟ interest and
concentration better than sound only learning environment. Therefore, using a video in class is
one best thing for experiencing the listening sequence in real life.
In addition, video can take students into the lives and experiences of others. Lonergan, J
(1984) adds the point,
“…at their best, video presentations will be intrinsically interesting to language learners.
The learner will want to watch, even if comprehension is limited. The learner will want to
see more, to ask questions, to follow up ideas and suggestions if the material is
motivating”.
In this way, by generating interest and motivation, the video films can create a climate for
successful listening.

1.3.2 Video lowering anxiety in listening
Video can lower anxiety when practicing the skill of listening (Arthur, 1999). In order to
reduce classroom anxiety, it is necessary to make the learning context less stressful. In fact the
use of video is considered the most useful to deal with body language and help students to
interpret it before they listen through silent viewing.
Getting students to focus on these factors can help to raise awareness of what will come in
the listening. They will at least have developed a conceptual framework for what they need to
understand and will build up some expectations of what they will hear. Video, therefore, can
make the listening easier and more enjoyable.

1.3.3 Video helping learners study non-verbal aspects of communication
According to Susan Stempleski & Barry Tomalin (1990), our gestures, expression,
posture, dress and surroundings are as eloquent as what we actually say. Video allows us to see

video tasks and lessons be perceived by the language learners as a challenging and requiring
effort. Teachers should make sure that their students are able to answer questions based on their
ability to comprehend aural input so that the use of video in teaching listening is more beneficial.

1.4. Aspects of Listening Comprehension That Can Be Improved Through Video
1.4.1 Pronunciation
Video provides a good source of authentic listening for the practice of pronunciation
(McKinnon, 2005). When students are viewing, it is easier for them to notice how new words are
pronounced. This activity can also be done with audio, but imitation is improved with video,
since the students can see how mouth and movements fit with voice. This makes students depend
upon their ears and more importantly, realize how important to do so.
Moreover, video is also a great source for designing recognition exercises to deal with
sentence stress. English is a stressed-timed language: certain syllables in a sentence have stress,
therefore create a beat, while other syllables tend to be said quickly making it difficult for
students to hear. Stress, which is the speaker‟s choice, is used to convey meaning. In this
exercise, students hear and recognize the parts of the sentences which are prominent and practice
sentence stress in context.

1.4.2 Vocabulary
Video can help learners use the right vocabulary in the right situation (Lonergan, 1984).
In fact different social situations require different language. Many language learners are able to
achieve reasonable fluency and accuracy in the target language, in the context of the classroom.
The same learners then go on to make mistakes in personal dialogue with native speakers. There
may be no errors of syntax or concord, but in terms of the situation in which the language is used,
the learner is saying something which is inappropriate. In the native language, the normal
language learner has enough competence to understand why certain utterances are too polite, too
vulgar, too formal, or too full of slang expressions to meet certain situations. The parameters
which determine the appropriateness of a remark are more than linguistic. They involve the full
range of paralinguistic features and inter-personal relationships. These can be presented to the
learner using the flexibility of the video recorder in class.

nonnative speakers understand stress patterns and allow learners to see body rhythm and speech
rhythm in second language discourse through the use of authentic language and speed of speech
in various situations.
Summary
In short, this chapter is aimed at providing the theoretical background useful for the study.
First comes an overview on listening comprehension and listening comprehension process and
then the roles of listening in language teaching and learning are discussed. Moreover, the benefits
of using video in teaching listening are also referred to. Finally, some aspects of listening
comprehension that video can help to improved are examined so as to help bring about useful
ideas for the study.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SURVEY

English to answer the questions given and the data collected from the survey would surely be
reliable.
Finally, being technical students, English to them was really an challenging subject. As a
result, when listening to the boring recorded tape, many of them felt asleep or did private things
during the listening lessons. That state often led to low results or even failure in the listening
exams. That was the reason why the researcher would like to carry out the research of using
video as an aid in teaching listening skill in order to erase the students‟ prejudice against this
skill, draw their interest to this very communicative skill and then help them improve their
listening ability.

2.3. Data Collection Procedures
The researcher used questionnaire and interview, along with the tests as the main sources
to collect data. According to Burnes (1999:25), “triangulation involves gathering data from
different sources so that the research finding or insights can be tested out against each other”. As
a result, the reliability and validity of the research are better ensured.
Using questionnaire and tests, the researcher could obtain data quantitatively, which later
on would assist in her study with persuasive figures concerning issues investigated.
Using interviews to find out students‟ opinion on listening skill, the researcher could have
more in-depth information on certain aspects that could not be unveiled from the questionnaire.
This helps prove that data collection was not only quantitatively but also qualitatively valuable.
In her study she intended to investigate the process of using video in teaching listening
skill, so these characteristics of a quantitative and qualitative study are particularly suitable for
the research as what she wanted to gain was deep understanding of students‟ reaction to video
and the effects that video can bring into a listening class. The steps of the study were as follows:
1. The researcher taught 2 classes of 50 students for a week and then gave them a
listening test as a pre-test and got their opinion on listening skill.
2. Then she taught them listening for the whole term. During that time, one class was
taught listening skill with the use of video along with lessons from the students‟ book
whereas the other class had lessons from the book only.
3. A survey was done in the former class about their opinion on using video in listening

author in the same way of assessment and then it was analyzed in detail. The tests were
conducted in class A-the class which was taught with video, and class B- the one without video.
For doing the tests, the author played the cassette twice. After each time the cassette was
played, students had two minutes to choose the answers before author moved on to the next part.
Students were instructed to circle the correct answer for the listening task 1 and to mark the
sentences true or false for the listening task 2 on the test sheets. The total score was 10, with the
main results of the pre-test and the post-test being the students mean scores. The pre-test was
conducted in week two of the second term and at the end of term (after 15 weeks), the post-test
was given as a means to assess the effect of video on students‟ listening skill.

2.6. Data Analysis and Discussion
2.6.1 Factors that cause difficulties in learning listening (Question 1 – Appendix 1)
Chart 1: Students’ difficulties in learning listening
According to the figures in chart 1, the most difficult thing facing most of the students
was the speaking speed of the speakers (32%). A smaller figure of the students (28%) said
limited vocabulary hindered them from listen comprehensively. Stress and intonation caused
difficulty for 20% of the students meanwhile 16% of them had problem in understanding the
accent. There are only a few students (4%) saying that grammatical structures caused them fewer
difficulties in learning listening.
It can be drawn from the above figures that in order to help students better their listening
skills, it is important for the teacher to take these difficulties into consideration when applying